He now poisoned his position with many while making himself a martyr for others.
At the end of the day, this meeting between Zelensky, Trump, and Vance will be judged through partisan lenses as pretty everything is. The trouble for Zelensky is that he pissed off all of the people in power, while playing to all of the people who will do little more than offer moral support.
To be clear, Zelensky and Ukraine will never win this war with Putin. While Russia has suffered more casualties, Ukraine has less resources. Russia has five time as many military aged people to draw from and still have more weapons than Ukraine even with Western aid. This war has been going on for three years, there are close to 300,000 dead, and as many as 1,000,000 wounded in battle. There was a cease-fire agreement pretty much sitting on the table for Zelensky and he chose to play hardball and reject it. Apparently he still believes that he can "win" a war or so it would seem. Absolutely nothing else makes the least bit of sense here.
But how does Zelensky win a war without US support? Perhaps he believes that if Trump abandons Ukraine that the EU will suddenly come to his defense. But the entire UK put together has less than half of the GDP as the United States and no where near the military capabilities. They do not have nearly enough munitions or weapons to send Zelensky to make up for what the US may now just stop providing. Even if they were to make some sort of combined pledge of something similar in funding, it would take time to build weapons or munitions to fill in the gaps. Even then, what the US has provided has only slowed the Russians down. It is nothing in the vicinity of enough to provide Ukraine with a path to victory.
Could the EU decide somehow to send troops without US backing? That would be extremely doubtful, as it would actually put us in what would then be a literal world war. While many liberals in these nations might like the idea of spiting Trump, I doubt they would start WWIII to do it. The options from the EU are limited and no doubt in reality their practical realistic options will be little more than moral support that does nothing to garner us any closer to peace in that area.
If I was a Ukrainian right now or someone looking for a peaceful solution to the problem I would be wondering what in the hell is Zelensky's next step?
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